Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 22:07:05 -0800 (PST) From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Linux Matters (Feb. '96 Byte) (fwd) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960124220215.181B-100000@localhost>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I just read another four-page article on Linux in Byte. This one was
especially disturbing as it gave NO mention to FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSDI,
Solaris, or ANY other non-Linux, non-MSDOS operating system, not even in a
sidebar. At risk of sounding like one of the "Linux fanatics" that the
author mentions, I think it stinks to see such a single-minded article
when there are so many free OS's available. So I wrote this letter to
the author and the Editors. Sorry to waste bandwidth with this, but if
the Linux people managed to muscle their way into mainstream media with
fanatical E-Mail tactics, a more civilized approach along the same lines
may prove instructive. At any rate, I hope you enjoy, and feel free to
write your own response...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jake Hamby | E-Mail: jehamby@lightside.com
Student, Cal Poly University, Pomona | System Administrator, JPL
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 22:01:57 -0800 (PST)
From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com>
To: tyager@maxx.net
Cc: editors@bix.com
Subject: Linux Matters (Feb. '96 Byte)
At the risk of sounding like one of the "Linux fanatics" mentioned in
your Linux Matters article, I'm surprised that you didn't mention any of
the OTHER free Unixes available for PC's, FreeBSD and NetBSD, or
inexpensive commercial Unixes like BSDI and Solaris.
<Warning: I can get carried away with my E-Mail, and this is no
exception. I sincerely hope you take the time to read it, and feel free
to take excerpts for a Letter to the Editor. Thanks!>
I used Linux for a year on my PC at home before I discovered FreeBSD.
The superior networking performance of FreeBSD (noticeable even on my
slow PPP connection, and documented in benchmarks at
http://plastique.stanford.edu) combined with the simplicity of a single
distribution (compared with at least three slightly incompatible Linux
distributions mentioned in your article), and the freedom from worrying
whether my kernel, libc, ld.so, binutils, or other components are
up-to-date (as is often the case with Linux when you want to play with a
new program), led me to switch, and although I still have my Linux
partition, I'm ready to delete it as soon as I need the disk space.
Those are just three advantages of FreeBSD. There are others, and
likewise, there are disadvantages relative to Linux. For example, with
fewer FreeBSD users, there is less new development, especially in the
crucial area of device drivers. My point is that no OS is perfect, and
since there are an abundance of excellent free OS's for PC, you should
have mentioned some others so that your readers will choose the best one
for their purpose.
A prime example of this is a Web, FTP, or other Internet
server: FreeBSD's superior 4.4BSD networking code makes it the obvious
choice, all other things being equal, yet I'm distressed there are
hundreds of Internet sites run with Linux, nonetheless. However, the most
impressive (in my opinion) site, Walnut Creek CDROM (the home FTP site of
Slackware LINUX :-), which services 300+ simultaneous FTP sessions, and
30+ simultaneous WWW hits, plus Netscape secure HTTP, FTP mirroring, and
a few interactive users, all on a single 100MHz Pentium, is run using
FreeBSD!
In short, while Linux is the most popular Unix for PC's, and deserves
attention commensurate with its popularity in your magazine, I felt that
a four-page article with no mention of the wide variety of non-Microsoft,
non-Linux OS's available on the PC (not even a sidebar!) is really unfair.
One final comment: I hope you don't discard my article as the ravings of
a "FreeBSD fanatic." I'm really not, but the excessive fanaticism of
Linux users (even while I was one of them) really gets to me when I see
it in the mainstream press. Remember how you would've treated this
article a year ago if you received it with Linux substituted for FreeBSD,
and MS-DOS substituted for Linux! I hope you can find room in your
Letters to the Editor for some small excerpt as well.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jake Hamby | E-Mail: jehamby@lightside.com
Student, Cal Poly University, Pomona | System Administrator, JPL
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. I found your "The Sound and the Fury" sidebar doubly interesting
because, some years back, I used to be an Amiga fanatic. To this day, I
believe Commodore had a computer 10 years ahead of its time, and
squandered it by their incompetence in marketing it, and lack of developer
and user support. Still, the lack of hardware support led the Amiga to
fall by the wayside technically, and while it's still a fun computer to
use, it is severly lacking in horsepower. I would definitely not say that
"The fanatical element" of the customer base hurt the Amiga, and any CEO
who says this is an idiot, to say the least! If you have a loyal
following, and you disown them when you start losing market share, you're
left with nothing! I DOUBT that Apple's CEO would say that the fanatical
Macintosh user base is a disadvantage to Apple's reputation, eh?
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.91.960124220215.181B-100000>